for the camera angle you have i would suggest having the direct light coming from the right or left to get some nice definition of the geometry. at the moment the light source appears to be coming from just behind the camera so it doesn’t give much in the way of depth or detail. to gain a more illustrative look in the picture if you’re interested you could always employ some ambient occlusion to further define edges or you could muck around with the colour of the lights
hope that helps
Nice start! When the main light source is directly overhead, shadows are small and uninteresting. Turning the light at an angle will not only create more interesting shadows but also some more interesting illumination.
On top of this, try to shape the objects with light. Try to make each side of the objects’ illumination different in values so that the shape of the objects are clearly visible.
Thanks for the input
I have changed the direction of the light added a slight red tint to the light as well
what do you think?
Maybe put the sun at two hours before sunset? Add some haze? Maybe a shot from inside one of the structures with some dust in the air and a portal light so you see some rays. That would require a little more work and tweaking. But I think it this needs more atmosphere. Looks good!
That’s cool. What software are you working with? I agree with IRAFK, you should try to add some participating media (air density, smog, fog, dust, godrays, etc). What is your lighting setup? One direct light? It’s ok, but most important what is your indirect illumination technique: global illumination, final gather, hdri?
If you want to make it realistic, I think you should work with indirect illumination and tweak your scene with it. You can also add more light sources and I think you should soften your shadows too. Have fun! :))
this is where i am currently at, tweaked some of the Sun and Sky settings. I totally agree with adding particles in the air. Though, i have never attempted something like that. Where is a good place to start if I am trying to add some dust and make certain rays visible?
also any tips on speeding up my render?
I know that having the gold material is really slowing the render down, before adding it, i was at 2 minute renders now im at 27 min
Looks nice. I would add some clouds on the sky, just a little, then the wall on the left is too blank. You could add something on the foreground out-of focus, but in a relative darkness to create depth. The green color doesn’t fit well, make it warmer.
Hi!
You could use Mia_material_x (Maya) or Arch&Design shader (3ds Max) to make your textures realistic. After you do this, plug a mia_rouncorners in the “overall bump” of your mia_x textures, so the edges of your objects will look softer, more realistic.
For the gold material, use mia_material_x too. You can choose from a preset (chrome, stained metal) or recreate the gold yourself, but keep your glossy samples under 32/64…
In mental ray Render Settings:
Quality Tab/Raytracing:
keep reflections / refractions to 2 / 2 and Max Trace Depth at 4
Indirect Lighting: use Final Gathering (You don’t need Global Illumination for outdoor…)
set Accuracy to 50-100 and point density to 0.1-0.4
You should delete your Physical Sun and Sky, and create a new one if you have added too much samples values. And set your Anti-Aliasing to Min 0 Max 2.
Participating Media (particles in the air) is complicated, you need to find a good tutorial and follow step-by-step…
You can simulate a foggy day lighting by adding haze in the skylight. I hope it helps!
^^ Excellent advice. Do that and it should decrease your render times and improve the look a lot! 
Cheers
Does Maya have these “pro mats” sets, like Arch&Design etc? Or is that 3DMax only thing? I’ve been trying to find some good sets for Maya’s mental ray, (chrome, water, gold, copper etc) just to help speed things along if I just through on a quick texture without having to build them every time. Is there such a thing?
Thanks
Maya has 9 presets of Mia_x materials (chrome water glossy plastic…), and I believe that 3Ds Max has over 30… But the upside I think is that you really learn how to tweak the settings to make it look like you want. Honnestly, I’ve been working with Maya mental ray for a year now, and I never used another material (for archviz, but some vfx and animation stuff too) to recreate whatever real-world material I had in mind… Love it! BUT, it can render funny in the viewports.
I’ve been trying to create an accurate water now for about a week. I cant get it to work, i need it behave like real water. The scene is an underwater dock, minimal lighting, but i need the room to be filled with caustics coming for the sub bay. There will be lights in the bay itself, similar to submerged pool lights. I’m having no luck. Heres the link to the thread if you are interested. Link Sry if im high jacking this thread, its just the 1st time ive been able to get any feedback on mats and mental ray.
Cheers
thanks RickToxik
this is exactly the type of advice, i will try that in a bit and post a new render when i do
ok so i did the settings like RickToxik mentioned, and it actually increased my render time to about 34 min.
this is the image
does the fact that the scene is considerably bigger than the the grid have anything to do with the render times? Would subing the material x shader instead of using blinns speed up or slow down the render?
Hey IRAFK,
Although I have never created an underwater scene, I have seen somewhere that using caustics and participating media (mib_volume or parti_volume) will help you to create the underwater feeling… Did you put some participating media in your last image?
Here’s one simple tutorial about participating media:
http://cgnotebook.com/wiki/Mental_ray_volumetric_shadows_with_parti_volume_in_Maya
You can also read this thread:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/archive/index.php/t-812857.html
You could also use glow to create beams on your lights (light fog or light glow) to simulate beams of light in the water.
Your round windows (portholes) are looking a little funny i think… Maybe you need to add edges before converting to subdivision.
Good Luck
When you render with mental ray, you have to pay attention when you make a modification and suddenly make your rendering time a lot longer. You said earlier that when you added your gold material your rendering time went from 2-3 minutes to 27 minutes. This is the problem. It should not be that long, and your rendering time should never increase that much in one step… There are some exceptions of course, but this is not normal. I would try to render without the gold objects and see if that is the problem. Also did you delete your sunlight and create a new one like i said, without changing the default values? And keep your fg point density to 0.1.
RickToxik,
i agree with you, i think that the next step is to remove the gold material and start over from there. Im thinking it also might be to some benefit to compeltely redo the materials using maya material x. Also, i remember reading something a while ago about the size of your scene making a difference in mental ray. do you know anything about that? will it help to make the objects smaller? The initial grid is that defaults in maya is super tiny
I don’t think the physical scale of your scene really matters here. I THINK (not 100% sure) this will impact on your rendering time if you render effects that calculate the physical scale like depth of field, participating media or some other special cases.
If you make one change and your rendering time goes from 5 minutes to 30 minutes, this is not normal and you should undo the change and start from there. I have seen this many times…
Try another material for your gold. I don’t know how you made the reflections glossy on that material, but those can make your rendering time very high.
If you really don’t know what the problem is in your scene, you can try to reimport your objects in a clean new scene to see if that helps.
I’m almost sure it’s not the size of objects versus the size of the grid.
So what i ended up doing was exporting my scene as an .obj then re importing it back into a new scene, redid all my materials using mia material x, re did the sun and sky shader, and i cut down my render time from 28min back to 2 min. Im pretty happy with the way this color pass turned out, now i have to work on getting some DOF and other passes so i can composite this image and getting it to look better.
though this gold material isnt quite as glossy as i’d like it to be. any suggestions on making it glossier/have more shine
